Superman/Batman: Apocalypse

The latest teamup of DC Comic's most iconic characters within under the DC Animated umbrella, "Superman/Batman: Apocalypse" ramps up the characters and amps up the fights. While I'm not ready to say teaming Superman and Batman is becoming boring, but Bruce Timm and Co. can no longer rely on the novelty of the World's Finest to carry their film.

This chapter (if you can call it that; really these films have the feeling of being standalone entries-more on that later) finds Batman (Kevin Conroy) discovering a mysterious meteor-like object crashing into Gotham Harbor. The object, it turns out, is a ship that contains Kara Zor-El (Summer Glau), perhaps better known as Superman's cousin, Supergirl.

Superman (Tim Daly) is fiercely protective of his kin, and chafes when Batman suggests Kara, who hasn't had a lifetime to get her powers under control, might be dangerous. But Superman finally relents and allows Kara to be taken home with Wonder Woman (Lauren Montgomery) and train with the Amazons.

The girl also catches the attention of the villain Darkseid (Andre Braugher), and soon he's recruiting her.

The story is somewhat familiar, and has been handled in other incarnations of these characters, but the Big Three pairing feels a little underwhelming here. Most everything here feels rushed and half thought through, as if they had cool moments ready but didn't plan out the circumstances to execute them under.

Exhibit A is a battle where Supes, Bats and Wonder Woman throw down with a legion of Doomsday clones (which, as it turns out, are poor duplicates rather than exact copies. There are a couple of really great moments in the fight, but the entire thing is rushed and feels empty.

Darkseid's entire involvement almost feels cursory, since there is obviously a need for a villain, but it's almost a roulette wheel spin as to who it could have been hoping to recruit her.

The "Apocalypse" moniker also is sort of a misnomer, as it never feels like the world is all that in danger; much of the action takes place on Darkseid's homeworld of Apokalips (which is obviously the tie-in with the title, but perhaps they were afraid the Spelling Police would ticket them if they used the comic-book spelling).

But don't get me wrong: as action goes, this one is loaded, and everyone gets a moment or two. Wonder Woman gets a couple of the more resourceful moves in a fight with the heads of Darkseid's army, Kara and Superman get a lot of great fight moments, and even Batman, physically overmatched, flexes his mental muscles a bit.

This story is obviously a Superman/Kara arc, and the other heroes involved frankly get in the way at times. This is most evident at the film's climax, where Superman and Kara battle Darkseid, while Batman and Wonder Woman are nowhere to be found. It seems clear that this film had some script issues that were probably related to rushing the film into production, but from this seat it would be better to get it right than to get it quick.

The entire purpose of teaming characters like this is that they impinge on each other's continuity, which in stand-alone films we lose that novelty. The Batman from DC Animated's last film "Batman: Under the Red Hood," then, feels like a different character than this one, though their costumes more or less look the same and their character traits are somewhat close. I'm hoping future films try to build a world for the characters to inhabit, rather than just creating a generic superhero framework that we have to re-learn in each film.

The extras on this Blu ray/DVD combo pack are pretty robust. In addition to DC Animted's usual slate of talking-heads documentaries, episodes of related 90s-era Timm Superman or Batman animated series (in this case Superman), there's a tremendous Green Arrow short that is the first in a presumable series that hopefully will make neat tie-ins to the main films (at one point he identifies himself as a member of the Justice League, and other heroes figure into the plot). There is also an advance look at the next DC Animated film "All-Star Superman."

Film: 3.5 Yaps Extras: 4.5 Yaps